ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

Buffy music for Buffy fans by Buffy fans.

Quid est?

Musica Ostium Infernum is a collection of songs written as witness to the events of Buffy Summers and the characters that affect her world. However, rather than plot-oriented ballads, they commemorate the overlying, timeless, and philosophical issues conflicting the personae.

Quare?

Because.

Every civilization has a mythos (if not many) of its time to which the populus can relate. The Greeks had Zeus, the Norse Odin, the Egyptians Ra, the Chinese Dou Mu, and so on. These mythos serve not only as archetypes of the zeitgeist for the contemporaries in that culture, but they help later generations and cultures to understand a little more richly and deeply. The finer semantic details of "our current culture" notwithstanding, the trials of Buffy serve well what so many myths before have served their respective cultures. They offer entertainment, edification, education, enlightenment, escape, and everything else required of truly timeless characters and situations. They give us anchors to which we can attach our abstract concepts to help us understand situations, to help us express our feelings and cope with situations. They give us mediums to further convey our own thoughts to others by providing the vehicles that both parties can understand, to which both parties can readily relate. Archetypes.

And as the many of the people of these cultures were prone to do, they focused their creative endeavours on these mythos. Countless works have been written, marble chiseled, paintings stroked, and songs sung as direct derivations. Much toiling has ensued to further immortalize or galvanize our muses.

So it is as with Buffy and the characters that populate her world.

Musica Ostium Infernum is the third-party witness to the episodes of Buffy, cantatas and ballads from the unseen bard of Sunnydale. The songs are written expressedly for fellow followers and aficianados but hopefully approachably for others not yet privy to the saga of Buffy.

This first album, Liber Primus, is based on the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, each song corresponding to an episode.

The album was entirely written, performed, and recorded by Micah Barnes over the first half of 2011.

From the official press release:

"Liber Primus" is a collection of songs inspired by the episodes in Season 1 of Joss Whedon's WB/UPN series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." These songs are not lines from the script set to music, they are impressions left in Barnes' mind after watching the episodes, recently, for the first time.

"I don't recall ever deciding to do it as much as I simply found myself doing it," Barnes said. "Some people hear voices; I hear music. One afternoon, when I was thinking back on the previous night's episode, I was hearing music as usual, but for some reason, I decided to write it down this time. The result is the main recurring motif used throughout the album."

"My attempt was to make it work on as many levels as possible, well beyond having a corresponding title between each episode and its derived song," Barnes said. "But I would also encourage people to watch, or re-watch, the first season ... it would stand to reason that the more one is familiar with the show, the more they would get from these songs.

"A large part of what compelled me to do it was simply to share it back with others who might appreciate it for what it's worth, with other fans. As humans, we like to do things with others and to share our creations. This is me simply making something I found to be neat or pretty, and I just want to share it with others who might appreciate it as well."

The physical album:

A limited-edition, screen-printed and hard-cased book with accompanying compact disc was created for attendees of the premiers in Murfreesboro, TN, October 28 & 29, 2011. The book includes lyrics and line art by Barnes.